Mirror, Mirror
by Mikkeneko
Summary: For Garrett Hawke, the toughest part of being Champion of Kirkwall is being the target of too many crushes - whatever choice he makes, he'll end up breaking his friends' hearts. But wait! There just might be a solution to his problem, and if it involves a little forbidden magic and eldritch horrors, that's no big deal, right? Crack, humor, multiple ships, Hawke/Anders main.
1. Chapter 1

**Mirror, Mirror**

 **Warnings** : Crack, inappropriate use of the Mirror of Transformation, polyamory, multiple ships, really terrible jokes of all stripes.

 **Pairings** : M!Hawke/Anders, M!Hawke/Fenris, M!Hawke/Anders again, F!Hawke/Isabela, Isabela/Merrill, F!Hawke/Isabela/Various

* * *

"No, listen, just trust me," Hawke said. "This is a _fantastic_ idea."

"Trust you?" Varric raised an eloquent golden eyebrow. "Listen, Hawke, I trust you enough to have our backs in a fight. I trust you to swoop dramatically to the rescue when someone is in need. I trust you enough to follow you into a dragon's den, for pete's sake, but I _don't_ trust any of your brilliant ideas to be remotely safe, sane, or sanitary."

"This baby is going to solve _all_ our problems," Hawke said, standing in front of the mirror with his hands planted on his hips. "Well. All of my problems, anyway. Not yours. And not _all_ of my problems, only the ones relating to my romantic life."

Hawke's romantic problems, as Varric saw it, mostly boiled down to the fact that he was too blighted appealing for his own good. Handsome (for a human) charming (after a certain insufferable fashion) and unfailingly kind to those whose lives had contained far too little kindness, Hawke tended to inadvertently steal hearts wherever he went. On the whole, Varric considered himself more lucky than not to be immune to the Hawke appeal; unfortunately, the same could not be said of their companions.

Aveline was married and thus safe (though Varric had his suspicions about what might have gone on on the boat ride over, which he'd written out in his up-and-coming bestseller 'Heal My Blighted Heart,') but she was the only one. The dalish mage, the broody elf, the warden apostate... even the Rivaini captain seemed to have broken her own no-strings-attached rule when the one on the other end of the string was Hawke.

"Even with the qualifiers, I don't think I'm sold," Varric remarked.

"For all my multiplicity of talents, Varric," Hawke said, "I'm still only one person, and I can only be in one place at a time. Barring some extremely exhausting and awkward time-sharing arrangements, that means that no matter what I do, I'm doomed to break at least three of my best friends' hearts. After all they've been through - after all the people who have let them down in the past - I can't do that to them, Varric."

Varric squinted at the artifact in question, a tall skinny sheet of (probably) glass set in a heavy, grotesquely warped wooden frame. "And a magic mirror that changes your appearance will help with that how?"

"Oh, but that's not all it can do," Hawke said, glowing with enthusiasm. "I don't know if you were listening to Xenon's speech -"

"I have a highly developed talent for tuning out droning speeches delivered by pompous windbags trying to sell me things," Varric told him. "Self-defense mechanism developed from years in the Merchant's Guild."

" - but this mirror doesn't only let you change your hair or nails. It actually reaches _through_ the Void into other worlds - other realities - other _possibilities_. This thing shows you not as you are, but all the ways you _could be_ , and you can choose whatever among the possibilities suits you best. And then, once you've found the greatest possible you... it doesn't just _show_ you that, it can actually bring it into being!"

Varric didn't often admit it, but that was pretty impressive. Also terrifying. This was why no self-respecting dwarf let himself get involved with mages or their freaky magic shit. "So, what?" he said. "You're going to use it to transform into a 'potential you' that can triple-time three or four of this city's neediest legends?"

"Nope," Hawke said with a shining white grin. "I'm going to use it to bring in reinforcements."

Varric slapped his hand over his face, and dragged it down with a groan. "Hawke, no, " he said, an all-too-familiar refrain. "Do you want infestations of eldritch horrors in Kirkwall? Because this is how we get infestations of eldritch horrors in Kirkwall!"

"Just think of it!" As usual, Varric's direly worded warnings went unheard. "Hawkes enough to go around, Hawkes enough to make everyone happy. I can't say I'd mind the help dealing with the bandits and Qunari and blood mages that are constantly pestering the city, either. Maybe, with four of us handling the crises that keep popping up, I'll actually be able to take a day off without someone clamoring for help finding a lost family heirloom or something."

"Or you could just learn to say 'no' for a change," Varric suggested hopefully. "Same effect, less creepy, reality-breaking magic."

"I've got it all planned out," Hawke said, ignoring the suggestion. "The perfect me for every occasion. For Merrill, a me that's a mage - one that's kind and gentle, who'll support her and understand her like only another mage can. Fenris on the other hand hates mages - he needs a warrior, someone direct and down to earth, someone who speaks his language -"

"You don't speak any Tevene," Varric reminded him. "Aside from the swear words."

Hawke huffed in annoyance. "If I can _potentially_ be a mage, I can _potentially_ speak Tevene," he said. "But I was talking metaphor, Varric, _metaphor_. I mean someone who understands the struggle, the fight, someone who hates slavery and tyrants like Fenris does and puts it down wherever he finds it."

"Ah." Varric nodded knowingly. "The language of the curb-stomp, you mean."

"Anyway!" Hawke cleared his throat. "Isabela just wants someone to laugh with, someone who can keep up with her and have fun. Someone who won't try to tie her down, or burden her with expectations she doesn't want to meet. Probably better be a rogue, since otherwise she'll just stealth off and leave me - I mean him - behind."

"It certainly sounds like you've put a lot of thought into this," Varric remarked, then paused. Something - or rather someone - was notably missing from this lineup. He began to get a foreboding feeling about this. Surely Hawke couldn't be that oblivious? "Ah - Hawke," Varric said, clearing his throat. "Are you sure you aren't leaving something out?"

Hawke jumped, looking spooked. "What? Who? What are you talking about?"

Varric fixed him with a stern glance. He'd resolved not to interfere with the ongoing circus of Hawke's love life, but three years of watching Blondie waste away after his unattainable crush while crouching in a Darktown sewer was more than enough. If Hawke hadn't picked up on it by now, it was more than time to enlighten him. "A certain apostate we both know? Tall, skinny, perpetually unshaven? Don't tell me you haven't noticed, Hawke. He's completely smitten."

"Oh. Ah..." Hawke squirmed uncomfortably. "Well..."

"It's pretty cruel, to do something like this for all the rest of your friends and leave him out, isn't it?" Varric asked sternly.

"I wasn't planning to!" Hawke objected. "I just figured... well... I don't really know what it is he sees in me, so I couldn't... I thought I'd just... once the others are taken care of, I mean... and I don't have any other obligations... I thought he and I could..."

The torch went on over Varric's head. "Hawke, you sly dog," he exclaimed. "You? And Blondie?"

"There's no need to sound so surprised," Hawke huffed. "I've been thinking about it for a while now. I just... didn't want any of my other friends to get hurt because of a choice I made."

Varric clapped Hawke on the elbow, the closest he could come to a pat on the shoulder while Hawke was standing up. "Hey, no objections from over here," he said. "I think you'll make a sickeningly cute couple. And if it gets you two to stop pining over each other and actually do the funky fandango, then this idea is sounding better all the time."

"Great!" Hawke perked up again, beaming that sunshiney grin.

"So that's Blondie, Daisy, Broody, and Rivaini all taken care of," Varric said, ticking them off on his hands. "Aveline's married, and I want no part of this. What about Choir Boy?"

"Sebastian?" Hawke gave Varric a puzzled look. "What _about_ Sebastian?"

"Never mind," Varric sighed.

"So you'll help, Varric?" Hawke said hopefully.

"Yes, may my dwarven ancestors roll over in their stony graves, I'll help you with your insane world-breaking magic plan," Varric said, rolling his eyes. "Besides, I know you'll do it with or without me, so I might as well be on hand to put out the fires."

At the very least, he should get enough material out of it for another book. Or maybe a serial.

Breaking the enchantments on the mirror to allow it to create multiple copies instead of just replacing its target with one, thanks for the help of Sandal, turned out to be the easy part. Mostly what Hawke wanted Varric around for, as it turned out, was to help him design the new and improved Hawkes. There were not, as it turned out, actually an _infinite_ number of potential Hawkes to choose from, but there was still quite a lot of variety.

"Varric, get a load of some of these beards! What are these people thinking? " Hawke laughed into the mirror. "This one looks like he has a badger eating his face. In what possible world is this fashionable?!"

"I don't know, Hawke. You're the expert on beards between us."

"Aren't you a dwarf? Aren't your people all about beards?"

Varric rubbed his clean-shaven chin. "I like to buck the stereotype."

"Hawke..."

"What?" At least he had the grace to look sheepish.

"I don't know if it's escaped your notice, but..." Varric nodded into the mirror. "That's a woman."

"No, no. See? She's got a beard -"

"Which is obviously fake and pinned on!"

"...Yes... well..." Hawke looked at his distaff counterpart in the reflection, who smirked back at him. "I make a very pretty woman, don't I?"

"I don't consider myself an expert in human women, but I'll take your word for it," Varric shrugged. "So who is this one for? Fenris?"

"Oh, I don't know, I was thinking Isabela."

"Isabela? Really?"

"Yes, haven't you ever heard her talk?" Hawke grinned. "The way she says it, men are only good for one thing, and women are good for six."

"Oh sweet Maker, look at the nose on this one. Varric, do you suppose this is an alternate universe where my mother married that ponce du Launcet after all?"

"I wouldn't hazard a guess."

"Hawke... no."

"Come on, Varric," Hawke pleaded. "I can get the slider all the way out to -"

"I'm telling you, no." Varric put his foot down.

"But -"

"This one's for Fenris, isn't it?" Varric interrupted. "Do I have to remind you that Fenris is an elf? He's already going to be pretty petit compared to you. There's no need to complicate the issue by saddling him with a horse's cock."

Hawke pouted. "You are no fun at all."

"So much secrecy, Hawke," Isabela purred as she followed Hawke into the Hanged Man. "What part of Kirkwall are we fucking up today?"

"No part of Kirkwall," Hawke huffed, offended by the question.

"Really?" Isabela chuckled with disbelief, idly fidgeting with the handle of her daggers. "Not going to expose the corruption of some city high officials, paralyzing the department as the Viscount scrambles for a replacement? Not going to murder any gang leadership, opening up a power vacuum that leads to a bloody gang war as underlings fight for the top spot? Not going to destroy the marriages of any hightown nobles by revealing the infidelity of one or both parties? Not one single building on fire?"

"I do more than just ruin lives and set things on fire!" Hawke objected. "I help people! I make them happy."

"She's got a point, Lethallin," Merrill said apologetically. "I mean I know you mean well, but you do have a tendency to leave an awful lot of dead or dismembered bodies everywhere you go."

"No one is getting dismembered today!" Hawke shouted. "Not even slightly!"

"If no one is getting dismembered then why the fuck did I get out of bed?" Fenris said crossly. He definitely did look like he'd been woken up too early for this, his hair messy and his still fixed in a thousand-yard squint. But then again, Fenris being Fenris, it was just as likely that he was still technically up too late from the day before.

"I have a surprise," Hawke said, full of wounded dignity. "A nice surprise. I got you gifts."

The three companions exchanged nervous glances. "What?" Hawke exclaimed.

"Gifts? From you? That's not exactly reassuring," Merrill said nervously.

"Is it going to be another _toy ship_ for the _landlocked_ sea captain?" Isabela said sweetly.

"Or another _book_ for the elf who _can't read?_ " Fenris added caustically.

"Or another _shield_ for -"

"You are all horrible ingrates," Hawke announced, stalking down the hallway towards the closed door at the end.

Varric was seated on a low stool outside the door at the end of the row, and he scrambled to his feet as they approached. "Hawke," he greeted him with fervent relief. "Thank goodness you're here. I don't know how much longer I could keep Sappy, Sassy and Scowly in there off each other."

"Who, who, and who?" Isabela asked. "Are we getting some new playmates for Varric to nickname? Will we be seeing some new faces around here soon?"

"Well, in a sense, yes," Varric hedged, "but in a sense, also very much no."

"Don't keep us all in suspense," Isabela scolded Hawke teasingly.

Fenris shifted his weight and sighed. "Can we just get on with this?"

"Ta-da!" Hawke crowed, throwing open the door to one of the Hanged Man's bedrooms.

It was a fairly standard room for the Hanged Man, aside from the monstrous eldritch mirror crowded in one corner; bed, desk, table, chair. Leaning hip-slung against the desk, bulky and intimidating in full plate, was Hawke; he had a great two-handed broadsword across his back and a red sash tied around his waist. As the door opened he straightened up and crossed his arms over his chest, turning towards the door with a stern scowl behind his full bushy beard.

Sitting on the edge of the bed with her legs crossed was also Hawke, dressed in leather with fur trimming, picking at her nails with the point of a knife. She glanced up through her eyelashes as the door opened, and the red streak across her nose wrinkled up slightly as she smirked in welcome.

In the chair on the other side of the bed was also Hawke again, dressed in blue robes and with both hands wrapped around a long polished-wood staff. He too was bearded, although much smaller and more neatly trimmed than his martial counterpart. He stood up when the door opened, turned towards them and bowed politely.

"Hawke, what's going on here?" Merrill took in the scene with wide green eyes. "What did you do?"

Hawke's expression was insufferably smug. "I found out how to use the Mirror of Transformation to make extra copies of myself," he said. "And... viola!"

"That's the instrument," Varric muttered out of the side of his mouth.

"- Hawke dating service at your service," Hawke said, ignoring Varric.

"So you're... they're... really all you?" Merrill said, mouth dropping open. "But - different you?"

"One hundred percent!" Hawke grinned. "They have all my memories, all my talents, all my positive attributes -"

"Plus quite a few more, in some cases," the female Hawke commented dryly from her seat on the bed.

"Does this mean what I think it means?" Isabela gasped, clapped her hands together under her bosom. "Ooh, Hawke, you're too good to me!"

Hawke cleared his throat. "Ah... not to mislead you, Izzy, but they're not _all_ for you," he said. "Only the middle one."

"Oh." Isabela pouted, dropping her hands. "Well, that's better than nothing, I guess."

"So let me get this straight," Merrill exclaimed. "Are you saying you dabbled in dark arcane magics and violated the fundamental boundaries between one reality and the next in order to create uncanny simulacra of life that should not be... to set me up with a date?"

"Uh," Hawke said, smugness melting away. "Well... when you say it like that..."

Merrill clasped her hands and bounced on her toes, beaming up at her human friend. "Oh, Hawke! You're ever so _sweet! "_

Isabela did a quick tally of the count of bodies in the room, and frowned slightly. "So, wait," she said. "If the lovely lady Hawke is for me - and I _do_ thank your taste - then what about Sebastian?"

Hawke blinked at her. "What about Sebastian?" he repeated blankly.

"Never mind," Isabela sighed, waving the comment off.

Fenris stared at the three Hawkes - four, including the one hovering nervously by his elbow - and then at the mirror lurking ominously in the corner. Without a word he turned on his heel and stalked out, barely missing clipping the doorframe with his sword.

"Wait, Fenris, where are you going?" Hawke said, calling after him in distress.

"I refuse to be involved in MAGE SHENANIGANS!" Fenris yelled back up the stairs.

"He's right, you know," the warrior Hawke said, uncrossing his arms. "This was a terrible idea."

"You wouldn't even be here if not for this idea," the mage Hawke pointed out.

"Just imagine it," the rogue Hawke sighed wistfully.

The original flavor Hawke made flaily gestures at him. "Well, don't just stand there!" he exclaimed. "Go after him! See, already you're of the same mind. You were made for each other! Literally, in your case!"

The Hawke in plate rolled his eyes and stomped out, brushing past Merrill, Isabela and Varric on his way.

"Thank the Maker I didn't get stuck with the broody death elf," the female Hawke said, rolling her eyes. Her gaze went to Isabela, and raked deliberately down the pirate's form and back up again. She grinned and changed her posture, slowly uncrossing her legs before rolling off the bed to her feet, deliberately stretching her arms over her head before she let them drop. "I definitely think I got the better end of the deal."

Isabela returned the grin, striding forward to stop in front of the new Hawke and plant her hands on her hips. "So, sweet thing," she purred. "What should I call you?"

"My name is Marian," Hawke replied, "but I also answer to gasps, moans, and screams of 'Oh Maker!' So it's up to you, really."

Isabela laughed. "I _like_ you!" She hooked her arm through Hawke's, bumping their hips together, and guided her towards the door. "Come on, sweetie. There's a whole tavern full of fools downstairs just waiting to gamble their money away, and after that I've got a room..."

The two of them exited the room in step together, and Hawke breathed a sigh of relief that at least one of his plans was going right today. That left only Merrill and Hawke still in the room together, hovering shyly with the desk between them.

"Um." Merrill glanced at her toes, then back up to meet Hawke's eyes, a faint blush stealing between the lines of her vallaslin. "So... so, you're really a mage? I mean. I don't mean to sound as though I think you aren't. It's just that our Hawke isn't, so I thought..."

"I am the son of a mage and the brother of a mage," Hawke replied, reaching across the table to take her hand. "Magic runs in my family on both sides. I honestly think it's almost stranger for me _not_ to have magic. But I am the son of Malcolm Hawke. Magic will serve what is best in me, not what is base." He lifted her hand to his lips, kissing the back of it gently. "As I hope that the best in me will serve you."

"Oh," Merrill said, color flooding her pale skin. She hemmed and stammered but did not, Hawke noticed with great interest, take back her hand.

"Well!" Hawke clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly, looking around for Varric. "That's a job well done, wouldn't you say?"

"Well, two out of three ain't bad," Varric allowed.

"Let's let the lovebirds have the room to themselves." Hawke headed out into the hallway, a spring in his step. "I'm sure I'll read all about it in your next book. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I have a doctor's appointment. In Darktown."

Hawke stalked through the streets of Kirkwall, the crowds parting before his intimidating armoredness like water before the bow of a ship. He knew where he was going, Fenris' mansion in Hightown; he knew everyone and every inch of this awful town.

Maker, what a pit. And he didn't just mean the parts of the city that were, literally, a pit. It had got to the point where he didn't know if anyone would even notice if the Qunari's crazy-poison were released into the water supply. Maybe it had been, and people were just too used to it to tell. Built on a graveyard of bones and a thousand years of misery, the legacy of atrocity was literally carved into the stone of this city, and did anyone care?

No. Only the rich and powerful covered up the evidence with the thinnest of veils so that it wouldn't disturb their view. The Lowtowners hated the Hightowners, the nobles hated the commoners; the Mages hated the Templars, the Templars hated the Mages, and absolutely everybody hated the Fereldens, and the Chantry sat on their asses and did jack-all about any of it.

It was a mess. It was a mess, was what it was, and the worst part about it was how everybody just let it happen. No one ever tried to _fix_ the system, they just wanted to get ahead. People came to Hawke to do their dirty work or clean up their messes but Maker forbid he actually do anything to change the status quo. Even his friends - though he would defend them to the death - only cared about themselves, or about enforcing the corrupt order of the city! The only one in this whole damn town who cared, the only one who was actually making an effort to change things was...

Hawke stopped short in the middle of the Hightown market, staring off into space with one step half-taken. After a moment, he nodded slowly to himself, mind and heart coming into a harmonious alignment. With one plated boot grinding on the flagstones he turned on his heel, putting the elegant mansions of Hightown behind him, and set off for the Undercity.

"Well." Isabela stretched luxuriously on the sheets of her bed in the Hanged Man, enjoying the slip of sheets over bare and heated skin. "That was certainly enjoyable."

"Yes, it was," Marian said with a laugh, draping herself over Isabela's side and digging her chin into Isabela's shoulder. Isabela took the opportunity to get in a quick grope of Marian's breasts - such nice breasts, who would ever have thought Hawke had it in him? - which elicited a pleased purr. "Next time I won't even try to keep up with you in a drinking contest, though. You drink like a sailor, Izzy."

"That's because I am a sailor, sweet thing," Isabela purred. She sighed, turning her eyes up to the ceiling. "This was ever so thoughtful of Hawke, I must say."

"Seeing as I wouldn't exist otherwise, I have to agree," Marian said. "And existing is just too much fun to pass up on."

"There's only one thing that's missing to make this perfect." Isabela frowned. "Can't think how Hawke overlooked it, really."

"Not enough cock?" Marian guessed.

"My thoughts exactly!" Isabela struck her fist against the pillow, then rolled over to the edge of the bed. "Let's go and find some."

"Welcome to my home," Merrill said, fluttering about the small apartment nervously. "Would you like some tea? I can make some tea... do you like it the same way Hawke likes it? I don't think I have any honey left..."

"Tea would be lovely," Hawke said, sitting on the short bench at her table. "Plain is fine."

"Of course, right away," Merrill chirped. She opened her cupboards, then had to duck as a couple of bats flew out over her head. "Oh, oh dear, sorry about the mess..."

"You don't need to apologize." Hawke shook his head. "Especially not for the condition of the alienage. It is so wrong how elves are forced to live like this."

"Do you think so?" Merrill looked pleased, setting a cracked saucer and a teacup in front of Hawke and sitting beside him with her own. "Sometimes it seems like I'm the only one who thinks so..."

"You aren't," Hawke said firmly. "The plight of the elves is a terrible one. Mages have their own difficulties, but at least there are some places in the world where they can be made welcome. The elves have been betrayed time and time again, driven out of every place they might have called home. To say nothing of the condition of the elves enslaved by the Tevinter Empire!"

"Oh, I know!" Merrill exclaimed. "Fenris likes to talk about the magisters... well, rant about it, really..."

"Fenris has every right to rant," Hawke said vehemently. "He's been through so much pain in his life, so much atrocity. He's unbelievably strong to have survived it, incredibly brave to hope for better than he's had, unimaginably brave to fight back against those who oppressed him, and still hold on to his innate sense of self and integrity..."

Hawke trailed off in mid-sentence, staring off into the distance. His eyes gleamed with tears, and Merrill looked worried.

"...Hawke?" Merrill asked anxiously. "Are you okay?"

Carefully, Hawke set the cup of tea back in its saucer . "...Ex...excuse me," he stuttered. He pushed the chair back and stood up from the table. "I'm sorry, I... I have to go."

To her astonishment, he walked out of her house without another word, setting off for Hightown.

Hawke stopped at a florist on his way down to Anders' clinic, acquiring a bouquet of embrium arranged with spindleweed. Fragrant, pretty, _and_ useful for healing potions, there was no possible way this could go wrong.

Except that by the time he got to Anders' clinic, wending his way through the cavernous maze of Darktown, it was to find that someone had beaten him there.

"Anders!" It was the warrior Hawke, still dressed in full plate and with the red sash tied around his waist. "Anders, I know you're in there! I need to talk to you!"

He pounded one gauntleted hand on the clinic doors, putting up a tremendous racket. The inhabitants of Darktown were beginning to take notice, poking heads out of makeshift shanties and turning their eyes towards the clinic. Hawke tried very hard to pretend that he didn't know the him who was knocking on the clinic door.

The door eventually opened, and Anders appeared in the doorway. He looked like he had been pulled from sleep, hair down and in a messy tangle around his face, stubble even less under control than usual, clutching his ratty coat around him. He squinted closely at the figure in his doorway, one hand clutching his staff for dear life. "Hawke...?" he said uncertainly.

Hawke wanted desperately to run his fingers through that messy hair, to pull him close and kiss him. Nor, apparently, was he the only one, judging by the way the warrior Hawke slammed his hand against the wall beside Anders' head and leaned in close.

"I know what you've been trying to do, Anders." If nothing else, Warrior Hawke certainly had a _strong_ voice; it carried clearly across the cavern to Hawke's ears. "You don't have to do it alone. I want to help you. I want you to be mine. _You want_ to be mine! Come with me, and let's burn this city down together!"

Anders stared. Hawke stared. Half of Darktown stared. _My pick-up lines! He's stealing my lines!_ Hawke thought desperately as he lurched forward, brandishing the flowers like a dagger. _He's stealing **my boyfriend!**_

And then the air cracked like thunder as Anders let loose a spell; Hawke vaguely recognized it as a mind blast. Warrior Hawke reeled backwards, stumbling and dazed, and Anders slammed the door in his face.

Hawke skidded to a stop, horrorstruck. His other self didn't seem to notice him, quickly resuming his shouting and banging on the clinic doors, this time with no response from within. Hawke felt his heart plummeting into his stomach, where it didn't stop until it reached his knees.

The other Hawke. The one he'd made to be with Fenris. Except that apparently the copy had decided he didn't _want_ Fenris, he wanted Anders. And Anders had demonstrated in no uncertain terms that the affection was not reciprocated.

Anders didn't want Hawke.

Hawke dragged his way back up through Darktown to the Hanged Man, his head clouded with misery (then again, it _was_ Darktown; that could have just been poison gas.)

"Back so soon, Hawke?" Varric looked surprised to see him, and he eyed the now-bedraggled batch of flowers suspiciously. "Don't tell me you got that far and then lost your nerve."

"I didn't!" Hawke dropped into one of the chairs in Varric's suite, then dropped his head into his hands. "It's ruined, Varric. My life is ruined."

Varric pulled up a tankard and poured something into it from a large bottle, then a smaller bottle, then a flask, then pushed the concoction down the table to Hawke. He picked it up and drank it without asking what was in it, since the less he knew the less Aveline would be able to yell at him later for not reporting. "What happened?" Varric asked him kindly.

"He turned me down," Hawke said, and covered his face with his hands. "Well, not _me_ me, but - the other me! He got to the clinic _first_ and he was pounding on the door and shouting for Anders that he belonged to him and - and he just slammed the door in his face!"

"Well, with an approach like that, I can't say that Blondie's at fault here," Varric commented, and Hawke groaned.

"He's ruined it for me," Hawke moaned. "The other me, I mean. Ruined everything! All I wanted to do was use illicit black magic to create artificial copies of myself to do my bidding. How could things have possibly gone _wrong?"_

Varric opened his mouth as though to say something, then closed it again. "You know, there's really nothing I can add to that statement," he said. "But look here, Hawke, you're giving up too easily."

"He hates me," Hawke said miserably.

"Well, you don't know for certain -" Varric began, when they were interrupted by the sound of running footsteps in the hall. Anders burst in, looking even more disheveled than when Hawke had seen him in the clinic, clutching his staff and slung about with satchels.

"Varric!" Anders shouted. "Thank Andraste I found you here! You've got to gather everybody together. Kirkwall is being invaded by demons!"

"Good morning to you too, Blondie," Varric commented, pouring himself another drink. "What's this about demons?"

"Demons disguised as people!" Anders exclaimed. "One showed up at my clinic! It looked just like Hawke. But _even sexier!"_

Hawke dropped his mug. The thud and splash made Anders look over at him in surprise. "Oh, hello Hawke," he said. "Good to see you, as ever. What are you doing here at this time of day?"

"Er..." Varric cleared his throat. "If you don't mind my asking, what makes you so sure that the Hawke you saw at your clinic was not, in fact, Hawke?"

Anders shook his head. "It was a good likeness, but it wasn't real. Justice could tell. There was no human soul inside - just an empty magic shell." He shuddered dramatically. "Maker, that was creepy. I drove it off and went out the mineshaft, and I don't _think_ it followed me here, but who knows how many of them are still out there?"

"Um," Hawke said nervously.

"I feel like I should take this opportunity to say 'I told you so,' " Varric remarked. "Relax, Blondie, we're not actually being invaded by demons. Have a seat, I'll order some breakfast, and Hawke here can explain to you in detail just how badly he fucked up this time."

Anders stared at Hawke, his eyebrows sliding up his face, while Hawke's face grew redder and redder with shame. "Hawke?" Anders asked incredulously. "Why are you carrying - are those _flowers?"_

This was going to be _good._ Varric stood up and went into the hallway with a spring in his step, looking for Norah to put in an order for pancakes.

What met his gaze, instead, was a tableau of chaos. The stairs leading downstairs, the hallway outside his suite, and the doorway to the now-empty room housing the mirror were all coated with a shimmering black sludge like an oil slick. As he stared, the door to the room creaked and swung, heaved open by a knee-high blob of coruscating darkness. It oozed through the narrow opening into the hall, and began sliding slowly along the black trail towards the stairs.

"Oh hey, look at that," Varric said in surprise. "We _are_ being invaded by demons."

* * *

~to be continued...


	2. Chapter 2

Explanations had to wait until the slime demons were properly dispatched. Anders insisted that they were not 'demons' in the strictest sense, as they didn't come from the Fade and didn't follow the normal rules of spirity magic, and indeed weren't properly alive at all; but as far as Varric was concerned, if it was horrible and creepy and made of magic, it was a demon.

Fortunately the slime-creatures weren't particularly difficult to dispatch - they shrugged off physical impacts and swallowed any edged weapon, but were satisfyingly vulnerable to fire. But while the blobs themselves burned nicely, the black trails on the ground that they slid over remained impervious to all attempts to eradicate them, growing only darker and more solid-looking the longer they remained.

The problem, as Anders explained to them once they'd put out all the fires in the Hanged Man's interior, was that the black trails weren't really physical at all: they were the visible symptoms of damage being done to the fabric of time and space itself, sort of like a reality-bruise.

Anders' reaction to Hawke's shamefaced explanation of both his original plan and the unintended results had been all Varric could have hoped for; he'd laughed himself sick at first, then been appropriately horrified.

"You're pulling things across the Void that aren't meant to be here!" Anders exclaimed once he had gotten to the horror part. "An inanimate object is one thing, but people? People have weight. History. There's a gravity to life that other things don't have, and the further away they get from their entry point - in both space and time - the more it weighs on the fabric of the Veil.

"That would be bad enough anywhere, but here? This is Kirkwall. The Veil is already thin here, full of cracks and tatters. The pressure these simulacra puts on the Veil is pulling them open. These black trails you see," Anders waved at the oily smears on the ground, pulsing with malevolent energy. "They're like ant-trails, leading from their point of entry to wherever they are now. And anything that wants to come in from the Void can follow them."

"How do you know all this?" Varric asked. "Because that was pretty impressive."

Anders huffed, the picture of wounded dignity. "Circle education, remember? I didn't spend _all_ of my higher metaphysics classes hiding under the desk sucking the professor's dick." He stopped to think about that for a moment, eyes distant, and then rallied: "Not even _most_ of my classes! Definitely less than half!"

Hawke had dropped his drink again at the mental images that provided, so it had been to Varric to ask "So here's the fifty-sovereign question, how do we get rid of all this shit?"

Anders frowned, poking the ugly black trails with the tip of his staff. "Well, more force is not the answer," he said. "The problem is caused by reality already being broken, so battering it more is just going to cause it to break up faster. What we really need to do is get everything that was brought through the mirror back into it, and the tears should heal themselves."

"I thought it might be something like that," Hawke said morosely. He heaved a sigh. Such a beautiful notion, so much effort, so much waste.

"Let's go round up our flock of Hawkes, then," Varric said. He stepped wide over the shiny black trail, taking ginger care not to touch any of it with his shoes despite the fact that it was entirely a non-physical manifestation of the corruption of reality. "At least we shouldn't have any trouble finding them - we can just follow the trail."

"Well, we know that at least one of them is probably still in Darktown, trying to break down my clinic doors." Anders chuckled. "Really, Hawke, as much as I appreciate you thinking of me, creating an aggressive, antagonistic plate-clad stalker to be my beau? I can't even say this isn't typical of your gift-giving skills, honestly -"

"But he wasn't for you!" Hawke interrupted desperately. "He was supposed to be for Fenris! None of the copies were for you!"

It was strange how all the color seemed to run out of Anders' face, leaving the smile fixed in a sickly grin that appeared to be pasted on top of his ashen expression. "Oh," Anders said at last, and the word echoed hollow.

Before Hawke could work out just what he'd said that was wrong, Anders began walking and talking too fast to keep up. "Well, silly me, that's what I get for jumping to conclusions, haha, right? Don't mind me, I'm just going to take my pet herbing knife and a roll of gauze for a walk in this nearby alley here, don't wait up..."

Only then did it click, and Hawke's lunge and cry of "Anders, wait, that's not what I -" was interrupted by another wave of ooze demons bursting out of the ground.

A proper application of flaming arrows and elemental weapons took care of the slimes, but nothing could peel Hawke's foot out of his mouth after that. Varric shook his head as he shouldered Bianca once more. "You're both completely hopeless," was his considered judgment. "What do they even teach you in human school?"

"There's no such thing as human school, Varric," Hawke said, leaning wearily against the nearest alley wall.

"There's not?" Varric hummed consideringly. "Well, that explains a _lot."_

* * *

"So," Isabela said as they sauntered through Hightown, admiring the sights, and also the scenery. "Where to start?"

"Well," Marian Hawke replied thoughtfully. "My mum always said, if you want something done right, take it straight to the top. Of course she was talking about bureaucracy and stuff, but that advice always stuck by me."

"I like the cut of your mum's jib," Isabela approved, following Marian's line of sight up the long avenues to the looming facade of stone. "So, to the Keep then?"

"My thoughts exactly," Marian said with a grin.

* * *

All the way up to Hightown, Hawke pondered his strategy. He couldn't just knock on Fenris' door to announce his love for him - that would be far too direct, aggressive and rude. Diplomacy, that would be key in helping Fenris understand that he wasn't under attack.

What did Fenris _like?_ It shamed Hawke to think that he didn't know, even as many years as he'd known the elf. Wine? Did he even really _like_ wine, or did he just like being drunk? Poor Fenris, drinking to dull the pain of his life, the pain of his memories, all alone in that dilapidated mansion he called home... Hawke started crying again right in the streets, just thinking of it.

He knew a lot more about what Fenris _didn't_ like - Tevinter, slavery, and mages. That last one was going to be a problem. But Hawke was determined that he could win Fenris over with enough careful courting. He just had to make Fenris see that he was not a threat, that he came in the spirit of friendship and courtship, and Fenris would surely be won over by his sincerity and goodness.

 _Surely._

Other passersby took a careful look at the weeping mage wearing the Amell family crest marching single-mindedly towards a nearby flower shop, and moved prudently to the other side of the street.

* * *

"Okay, but listen, _Sebastian,"_ Isabela was saying as they left Saemus Dumar's room by way of the window. Marian was still trying to re-lace her top, although Isabela hadn't bothered.

Marian frowned. "What _about_ Sebastian?" she asked.

"He's staying at the Chantry, which is right over yonder," she said, pointing. "Now I don't know if you've noticed, but those little confessional booths are _wonderfully_ private, and surprisingly soundproof."

"I don't know, Izzy," Marian was still dubious. "I don't really find having the Chant preached at me to be much of a turn-on. All that sanctimoniousness..."

"Sweetie, you are way overthinking it," Isabela said, laying her arm along the back of Marian's neck. "You don't have to like his politics or his philosophy. The important things here are:" She gestured in the air to illustrate each point, as though painting a picture before them. "Sexy accent. Gorgeous blue eyes. And biceps you could use to launch a hull one-handed."

Marian stopped to consider it, eyes glazing over. "...you could be right," she muttered. "Chantry, ho!"

"I'm not even going to touch that one, sweet thing."

* * *

"Look, it's not like I can fault your taste," Anders said, as he set fire to another wave of malignant oozes. "Our friends are lovely people, very attractive, even Fenris if you like looking death in the eye... I mean, I know I haven't got much to offer. I'm a mess, and I don't just mean my hair and clothes... there's no real way to get enough water to bathe in Darktown, and I don't have money to spare for soap and razors, but there's always something the clinic needs, and the underground..."

"I don't care," Hawke interrupted impatiently. Maker, how shallow did Anders think he was? He had enough gold to go out and buy the most glittery dazzled prostitute Hightown had to offer, but it wouldn't be Anders.

His attempt at reassurance seemed to have backfired, though, as the flames in Anders' hands guttered and died as he looked like someone had punched him in the stomach. "...Oh," he said. "Right, I'll shut up then."

"NO THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT!" Hawke shouted, horrified. He scrambled to recover from his mistake. "I mean I don't CARE that you don't -"

A new wave of demons erupted from the Mirror, cutting off Hawke's attempt at explanation. "Oh, for the love of Andraste!" Hawke wailed, and threw himself back into wanton slaughter.

* * *

"It's been such a pleasure to meet you, Lady Hawke," Sebastian said in his soft burr, struggling to re-do up the Andraste-emblazoned clasp on his belt. "I had no idea that Garrett had a cousin! Will you be in town long? Where are you staying? Perhaps I could call on you again?"

"Oh, yes... I will _totally call you,"_ Marian threw out hastily as she backed towards the door, hauling Isabela who was blowing kisses the entire way.

* * *

Anders was dead. That was the only explanation; he'd dropped dead in his clinic and his soul had gone to the Maker for judgment, been found wanting, and his punishment was deemed to be an eternity of being friendzoned by Hawke.

He wished heartily that he could slink off, go back to his clinic and bury himself in work, but it was just too important that he be here. The cracks in the Veil were getting worse with every moment the simulacra remained in this world, and he couldn't leave these malignant oozes to run rampant throughout Kirkwall. The incorporeal nature of the Void manifestations meant that Hawke's swords were not much use here, and Varric's fiery explosive shots took too long to prepare and fire, which meant they really needed a mage. Or a very determined man with a flamethrower, but failing that, a mage.

But even if not for that, Anders admitted, he would probably be dragging along behind anyway. Even knowing that Hawke's heart and eyes and other attractive body parts were turned elsewhere, even knowing that Hawke would never see him as more than a friend - if even that, if not just a useful enough acquaintance to be tolerated - he still couldn't resist the man. He would follow along behind him, heart in his throat every time Hawke failed to dodge a sword or a fireball, and continue to clean up other people's messes like he hadn't stopped doing since he'd left the Circle.

Maker, he was pathetic.

This would be so much easier if he could just get Justice to take over for him. The more he thought about it, the better an idea that sounded. He could just sink back into the darkness, let go of his body and chill out for a few hours while Justice took care of the creepy Void beings without him. Justice didn't care about Hawke, their throat wouldn't close up and their chest wouldn't clench painfully every time _he_ looked at Hawke and saw Hawke smiling at someone other than him.

Anders made an effort to summon Justice to him, but no eldritch cracks appeared on his skin. He tried thinking unjust thoughts, about Templars, and mages, and slavery, and taxes on sugar, but it was no good. He remained stubbornly un-possessed, alone inside his body, and if that wasn't just his whole problem in a nutshell he'd eat his feathers. "Bloody knickerweasels," he muttered.

"What was that, Anders?" Hawke asked, turning back to him.

Being put on the spot made Anders break out in a cold sweat. Maker, he couldn't deal with this. If Justice was being no help, perhaps he could at least make use of the spirit's aloof and unsociable reputation to forestall any further painful conversations? "No... I'm... not Anders," he stuttered out. "I'm... Justice. I mean, I am Justice. The spirit," he added as an afterthought.

"Nooo, you are definitely Anders," Varric commented, that blond eyebrow sliding up his face again.

"I am totally Justice," Anders said, pitching his voice as low and gravelly as possible in an imitation of his old friend's voice. Of course, Kristoff's vocal chords had been in an advanced state of decay at the time, and that was a bit difficult to replicate, but he gave it his best effort. "Verily, let us go forth and smite evildoers. ...Mortals."

"If you're supposed to be Justice, then why aren't you..." Hawke waved his hands around in the air, making an imitation of crackly eldritch lightning noises that sounded about as convincing as Anders' attempt to imitate Justice's voice. "Glowing?"

Anders sweated a little harder, thinking fast. "...Daylight savings time?" he tried.

He sent a silent plea to the spirit inside him. _Justice, back me up here!_

The reply came back a few moments later, voiceless and grumpy. _Why? There are no Templars, no blood mages, no demons. I see no reason why I should be involved in this farcical affair._

 _Because I can't face him like this!_ Anders thought back.

 _I believe your exact words, as I remember them,_ Justice replied, a surprising amount of acid in his voice for a platonic incarnation of virtue, w _ere that I should "butt out" of any matters concerning you and Hawke. So I shall obey your wishes and not involve myself._

And with that, Justice did the spirit equivalent of giving him the middle finger and rolling back over in bed. "Some wingspirit you are," Anders muttered under his breath.

Why hadn't he gone along with Isabela's party? Her party was the _fun_ party.

* * *

The two rogues exited the Chantry through one of the servant's entrances, which put them out on the narrower, less-traveled streets of Hightown - not that Hightown would deign to have alleys, as such, but certainly more of an _access lane._ Marian frowned up at the buildings towering over them, never having seen the mansions of Hightown from this angle before. "Is that Fenris' house over there?" she asked.

Isabela looked over, then chuckled, her sharp sea-captain's eyes having picked up what Marian had missed. "Depends. Does Fenris' house normally come with a besotted mage in the yard? That's got to drag down the property values."

 _"What?"_ Marian looked twice and sure enough, there was Hawke, standing in the green patch of the garden and sending calf-eyes and sweet nothings up at the determinedly barred windows. "What's _he_ doing there? Isn't he supposed to be with Merrill?"

"If so he's very, very lost," Isabela said, tsking. She watched a little longer, before she couldn't any more and had to put a hand over her eyes. "This is embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for him. Are you embarrassed for him?"

"Deathly," Marian agreed. "Who would have thought that I could be that pathetic? Let's go over and cheer him up."

Isabela's eyebrows went up, and then her eyes began to narrow in speculation. "You think he'd go for it?" she asked.

Marian grinned, that particular look that was simultaneously alluring and terrifying. "Trust me. This guy's a total pushover."

* * *

After removing himself from the scene of certain imminent mayhem and mage shenanigans at the Hanged Man, Fenris had done the only sensible thing possible: He'd gone back to bed.

He found himself awakened less than an hour later, for the second time that day, by Hawke on his doorstep. Except _this_ Hawke had blue robes, a staff, and a _hell of_ _a lot of nerve._

Twice he'd told Hawke to go away and leave him alone, and twice the mage had returned. Just when he thought he could finally have some peace and quiet, the sound of plucked lute strings combined with a too-familiar voice began to float up through his windowpane.

"My Elvhen lover's eyes are like the skies

A soft and sunlit blue

No other fair could half compare

In sweet midsummer hue

My lover's eyes cannot disguise

His tender, gentle heart ..."

Oh, for the Maker's sake. It wasn't even accurate - his eyes weren't even the right color. Fenris threw open the window and leaned out on the sill, glaring death down on his persistent visitor. "Will you cease that racket?" he snarled. "I already told you to go away! I want no part of your obsession!"

"Fenris, please just give me a chance," Hawke pleaded with him. "You know me, I am no magister. I just want to show you that I am not what you fear. That I _care_ for you, as a friend, as a man. I will always recognize your boundaries, I will always make certain you know that _your_ feelings are important - that your wants are important, and I will respect them - "

At this point Fenris interrupted. "My desires are important? You will respect my wishes?"

Hawke's neatly-bearded face lit up at that. "Yes! Yes I will!"

"Okay, so how about this: I desire for you to GO FUCK YOURSELF!" Fenris yelled, and slammed the window back down on the sill.

Standing heartbroken on the doorstep, Hawke almost didn't notice the two figures who appeared out of the shadows on either side of him, sidling up to bracket him between them. "Did you hear that, Izzy?" the one on the right - his female self, another of today's creations - purred towards her companion.

"I surely did," Isabela said cheerfully, plastering herself against his other arm. "He wants you to go fuck yourself, Hawke. Don't want to disappoint him, now do you?"

* * *

Hawke prowled the Undercity, mayhem on his mind. He hadn't expected Anders to reject him so thoroughly, and it still hurt. But there was no point crying into his beer about it. He'd just have to show Anders that their goals were the same, and if that meant butt-kicking his way through half the gangs in the city, then that was what he'd do.

He'd already beaten his way through the Reigning Men, the Followers of She, the Sharps Highwaymen and a roaming pack of Jehovah's Witnesses when his ears were caught by a commotion near one of the lifts. He hopped a staircase and strode around a corner to see a full patrol of Templars, clanking in their silverite armor, apparently accosting a teenage boy.

Hawke scowled. It would be too much to expect the Templars to be on point when he was fighting his way through waves of archers, oh no, but they were always up for strong-arming some unarmed guttersnipe. He strode forward, the clanking of his plate drowned out by the clatter the Templars managed to produce just while standing still, and demanded "What's going on here?"

The lead Templar turned towards him and pushed back his helmet, and Hawke's scowl deepened as he recognized Cullen. "Hawke?" Cullen sounded surprised. "What are you doing here? The Knight-Commander didn't ask for your help, did she?"

"I'm not Meredith's lackey," Hawke brushed this off. "What do you lot want down here?"

The teenage boy - Hawke had a vague idea his name was Willis, or Walter, or something like that - took advantage of the distraction to scamper away. Cullen didn't seem to notice. "We're on the trail of a dangerous maleficar," he said self-importantly.

"What maleficar?" Hawke wanted to know. It had better not be Anders they were after. If it was Anders, then Meredith was going to be short one slot for knight-captain the next day.

"A blood mage going by the name of Evelina," Cullen answered.

"Evelina?" Hawke knew her, of course; he knew everyone in this wretched town. Evelina was well known enough in Darktown for looking after the Blight orphans, the Ferelden children who'd lost parents to the Blight before making their way to Kirkwall or after, their parents being lost to gang wars or starvation or disease. "What do you want with her?"

"I had no idea she was in this city until this morning's reports!" Cullen shook his curly head. "I knew her from the Kinloch Hold circle; she was a supporter of Uldred's rebellion! A blood mage and a maleficar!"

"Allegedly," the Templar standing next to Cullen muttered.

"Probably," Cullen countered firmly.

"So what?" Hawke demanded. "She's been here five years and she hasn't done anything wrong, who the fuck cares what she did in another country?"

"It's not like that Hawke, you can't just wipe out the crimes of the past," Cullen told him pityingly. "And whether or not she's a maleficar, she's still an apostate, and someone like that has no business around children!"

Hawke _tched_ deep in his throat, a mingled noise of disgust and disbelief. "Don't I remember hearing that you once killed three kids? I don't think you get to talk about dangers to children."

"Wha - Where did you hear that?" Cullen's face turned red to his ears. "That's a lie! Complete, scandalous libel!"

"Actually, since it's not written down, technically it's _slander_ , not libel," the helmeted Templar remarked.

Cullen continued passionately. "That never happened! Total fabrications designed to smear my reputation! Besides, that was like _years_ ago, man, and in a whole nother _country_ , and anyway they weren't _kids,_ they were apprentices, which is totally different."

"Right," Hawke said. He reached over his shoulder and drew his sword.

"What are you doing, Hawke?" Cullen eyed his weapon with alarm, his hand twitching towards his own sword.

He couldn't possibly be _that_ dense. "What does it look like I'm doing?" Hawke demanded. "Stopping you."

"We are soldiers of the Chantry on official duty for the Knight-Commander," Cullen said indignantly. "You cannot stand in our way."

"Try me," Hawke snorted as he took a fighting stance.

One of the Templars tried a Silence on him, and Hawke sneered. The Templars had spent too long fighting mages and harassing civilians; they had no idea how to handle a _real_ warrior. A reminder would be good for them.

As the Templars closed in, Hawke found himself smiling for the first time since he'd come into existence.

* * *

Garrett Hawke, Champion of Kirkwall, was one of the city's most coveted eligible bachelors. He had dashed the hopes of countless young heiresses (and heirs) at many a society ball, and had managed to charm his way into the hearts of not just one, but four of Kirkwall's most legendary adventurers. He was adored by many, and respected by even more.

At times like this, it was a complete mystery to Varric as to _why_.

As they followed the malignant trails all across the twisting hexes and dirty streets of Kirkwall, it really was a wonder that Hawke was even able to walk with his foot so consistently ending up in his mouth. Varric was torn between amusement - no one enjoyed a romance without a few dramatic twists to heighten the suspense and anticipation, after all - and annoyance; Blondie was his friend, after all, and it wasn't exactly fun to watch his heart get stomped on by Hawke's poorly-worded blunders. Still, he'd promised that he wouldn't interfere.

"I just want to know why," he heard Anders say softly, the two of them walking a few steps ahead of him (but not enough to outdistance his sharp ears.)

"I already told you why," Hawke said wearily, trudging along through the ankle-deep ooze. "I wanted to make my friends happy."

"I know, but..." Anders hunched his shoulder, in a posture that would have tugged at the heartstrings if it didn't so make him resemble a molting bird. "But if this was something you wanted to do for your friends... why them and not me?"

"Because I don't want to be your FRIEND!" Hawke replied, exasperatedly.

"...oh," Anders said.

This went over _exactly_ as Varric could have predicted, and Varric smacked his own forehead in exasperation in lieu of smacking Hawke. "No, wait, that's not what I meant!" Hawke blurted out, panicked. "I don't want to be JUST -"

"Right!" Varric yelled, unleashing a burning explosive-headed crossbow bolt at the monstrous ooze demon that had been about to break into their conversation. "Okay, the horseshit is piling up in here, and when the rest of you are wading hip-deep, you know the dwarf has really had it!"

Rather than re-holstering Bianca on his back, Varric swung the crossbow's sights down to aim squarely at Hawke and Anders. Both human men looked deeply unnerved by his outburst - well, Hawke more than Anders, who at the moment looked like he just might throw himself in front of the crossbow without prompting. "Varric?" Hawke asked cautiously. "What are you doing?"

"Me? I'm not doing anything," Varric said innocently. "I promised not to interfere, after all. _Bianca_ , on the other hand, is thoroughly sick of watching you trip over your own tongue, and she's not letting either of you move a step until you hug it out."

Hawke sputtered. "You wouldn't do it," he said, trying to project confidence. "You'd never hurt your friends!"

"Oh, not permanently, no," Varric said, waving the tip of the crossbow lazily. "But I might wing ya good. Blondie here is damn hard to kill, and I'm fairly confident he could patch up any holes before they became serious."

"Varric, this is hardly the time for -" Anders started to say. Varric interrupted him before he could sabotage his only chance for happiness, again.

"Ah, ah! I've got the crossbow here, so I'm directing this conversation. Hawke," Varric swung Bianca back level with him. "Explain yourself to Anders. Preferably in words of one syllable, and keep it under thirty seconds."

"I don't -" Hawke stammered, his eyes flickering rapidly between Bianca and Anders. "You wouldn't - Anders, it's not -"

"Finger's getting mighty twitchy on the trigger here!" Varric announced loudly.

"I'VEFALLENINLOVEWITHYOUANDERS!" Hawke finally blurted out, all in one breath.

Anders looked shocked. "What?!"

Varric eased back on the trigger, tilting the crossbow's stock up towards the sky. "...there were words of at least two syllables in there," he said judiciously, "but I'll allow it."

Anders had no eyes for anyone now but Hawke. "Hawke, you don't have to pretend..." he protested.

"I'm done pretending!" Hawke insisted angrily. "I'm in love with you, Anders! Not Isabela, not Merrill, and not Fenris! I came up with this idea because I knew I didn't _want_ to be with them... not the way I want to - to be with you. They're my friends, but you - you are something _more_ than a friend to me."

"Hawke..." The dawning hope on Anders' face was almost painful to see, like looking straight into a sunrise. "Oh, Hawke..."

But Hawke wasn't finished. "I don't care about your hair or your clothes or where you live. I'm not out looking for money, for the Maker's sake!" he said passionately. "I just want you - you, as yourself, as everything that you mean to me."

"I... I don't... I can't..." Anders seemed to have lost most of his command of vocabulary, although the reddening blush creeping up his neck into his face was worth a thousand words. In the end he gave up on words, and took a small step into the circle of Hawke's arms. _"... me too."_

Varric grinned. He should have done this _ages_ ago. "Awww, isn't that sweet?" he said with a sigh.

Then his voice dropped an octave as the sights snapped back into focus on the new couple. **"NOW KISS."**

* * *

"Let's not do that again," Marian sighed as they passed out of the Blooming Rose into Hightown's red light district, Isabela in tow. They'd left the blue-robed Hawke behind, crying into his nonalcoholic beer over the fact that Fenris didn't love him.

Isabela hummed thoughtfully. "Oh, it wasn't so bad," she said. "Mages can be a lot of fun in bed, if you get them in the right mood."

Marian made a face. "As long as the right mood involves less sobbing," she said. Then her expression suddenly sobered. "Although, do you realize what this means?"

"What, the fact that I just had sex with the same person twice at the same time as two different genders? I really prefer to avoid hurting myself with existential paradoxes," Isabela said, brushing at the hem of her tunic. Really, whatever had possessed her to think that white was an appropriate color to wear around Kirkwall? The smoke and coal got into everything.

"No, no, I mean about Merrill," Marian said.

Isabela gave up on the strange black oily stains that seemed to be creeping up the hem of her dress, and turned her attention back to her companion. "Wait, what does that pretty boy have to do with Merrill?" she asked.

Marian was frowning, brows drawn down in worry. "That mage version of me was originally made for Merrill, remember?" she said. "Before he apparently lost his head and decided to commit suicide by Fenris, that is. But that means that he left Merrill all alone, all by herself, in the alienage with no one there to _comfort_ her."

"Really?" Isabela took a moment to consider this. "You know what, that _is_ terrible. We should go cheer her up."

Marian grinned. "You read my mind."

* * *

"You should have seen the look on you guys' faces!" Varric chortled, and there was really no one like a dwarf to deliver a full-bodied chortle. "You don't know the first thing about armaments, do you? Or else you would have realized that the safety was on the whole time!"

Varric gave Bianca a hearty pat, and the weapon's frame shuddered as the firing pin snapped out, twanging the taut cable flat and launching a crossbow bolt at deadly speed into the air. Almost immediately they heard a horrible shriek overhead, and a bird fell dead out of the sky in front of them.

Varric cleared his throat and readjusted the weight of the crossbow on his shoulder. "...could use a bit of maintenance, maybe," he muttered.

* * *

"Oh come on," Hawke said, when they came across the mage Hawke sitting disconsolately at a table for one by the Blooming Rose. They'd followed the trails of both the mage and the rogue into Hightown, and it was here that the trails had crossed - in more ways than one. "You have got to be kidding me! You and Isabela AND the rogue? That's... that's..."

"Fantastic?" Anders suggested, a dreamy smile on his face.

" -bloody awful!" Hawke finished indignantly.

Anders coughed, snapping out of it. "Oh, right, yes, yes. Absolutely awful. Shame on you, really. Shame."

"I could find no other cure for a broken heart but to lose myself in another's arms," the mage Hawke said mournfully, and downed his drink.

"Kind of struck out on the 'other' part, didn't you?" Varric chuckled.

Hawke wasn't done ranting yet, though. "How could you? You're both me! That's - that's incest!"

"Technically, isn't it more like masturbation?" Varric said thoughtfully.

"Oh, yes," Anders sighed happily. " - I mean, yes, Hawke is right. So wrong. So very... wrong."

"Let's get him back to the Hanged Man," Varric said. "He can drown his sorrows there while we collect the rest of the set."

Hawke stamped off to settle his bill with the mistress, while Varric and Anders considered the logistics of trying to haul a lovesick mage through the streets to Lowtown without attracting Templar attention. If nothing else, the bubbling black trails and flood of invading oozes ought to keep them occupied.

"All I wanted was to prove to him that magic wasn't evil," Hawke said, tears sliding down his face to drop into his drink. "That mages could be good people, that we can do good things."

Anders slid onto the bench next to him, crinkling his nose. "Yes, well, good luck with that, I've been trying to get that into his elvhen skull for three years now without success."

"Yes, but you're..." Hawke waved his mug vaguely in Anders' direction, indicating all of him with a slosh of his tear-watered cider. "You know, an abomination. I'm not!"

" ...Actually, you kind of _are."_ Anders pointed out, eyeing him sideways. "Come on, Hawke. Back to the Hanged Man with you and then you can sleep it off in the depths of the stygian void from whence you spawned."

* * *

Merrill answered the knock on her door to see two grinning rogues on her doorstep, dark and light. "Oh! Hello, Isabela," she said. "Hello... Hawke?"

"Please, call me Marian," the female Hawke said, as they brushed past Merrill into the cluttered apartment.

"What, she doesn't get the gasps, moans, or screams to the Maker speech?" Isabela said wryly, seating herself at Merrill's table with her booted legs crossed at the knee.

"Um..." Merrill blinked at Isabela, looking between her and Marian. "It's lovely to see you again, but... did you want something? I mean, I hope that wasn't too direct..."

Marian crossed her arms atop one of Merrill's shelves and leaned over them, the motion tugging down the hem of her shirt alarmingly. "Don't worry about being direct," she said. "We came to see if you'd like to... explore some _caves_ together. Yes. Deep, dark, secret caves..."

"But we explore caves with Hawke all the time, don't we?" Merrill pointed out. "Not that it doesn't sound like fun, it just... I mean, there just doesn't seem to be any need to seek them out. Plus they tend to be full of spiders... and bandits... and spiders!" She shuddered.

"No spiders in _these_ caves, Merrill," Marian said with a wink. "Guaranteed."

Isabela cleared her throat, crossing her legs the other way. "I was wondering if you'd like to go _pearl diving_ with us, Merrill," she said. A wicked smirk crossed her face. "Mm, I haven't been _pearl diving_ in so long..."

"My fanny you haven't, it was _this morning_ ," Marian exclaimed, mock outrage in her voice.

Isabela waved this aside. "Long enough!"

Merrill's brow creased in concern. "I don't know if you can actually do that in the waters around Kirkwall? I mean the tides are so rough, and the shore is too rocky for clams anyway. Are you sure you wouldn't rather just stay in today? Maybe do some crafting?" she said hopefully. "Venriel up on the north side of the Alienage does a lovely flower arranging class!"

"We'd love for you to you _arrange_ our _flowers_ ," Marian said emphatically. " _If you know what I mean."_

"I... don't think I do," Merrill faltered. She felt like something was definitely lacking in this conversation. Was she missing cues again? Had she forgotten to - "Oh! I'm such a horrible host. Would you like some water? Tea? Something to eat? I think I still have some crackers to put cheese on..."

Isabela sighed and leaned forward over the table, reaching out to put her hand on Merrill's arm. "Merrill, let me put it to you this way," she said. "The only dish we'd like to see you serve up is a lovely helping of _fresh Dalish pussy."_

"I think that's very hurtful, Isabela," Merrill said after a shocked moment. "No matter what the rumors say in Hightown, we _don't_ eat cats. Why would you even want to? What would Anders say?"

Marian let out a despairing groan, straightening up to throw her hands in the air. "I give up! It's hopeless," she exclaimed. She turned back towards Merrill with a sigh and a sad smile. "Thanks for having us, Merrill. I guess we ought to be going now."

She looked so sad that Merrill couldn't hold back any longer. "Um... um... wait!" Merrill said, running after Marian as she started towards the door. When the rogue turned back to her, eyebrows raising, Merrill flung her arms around her neck, standing on tiptoes to lay a kiss on her mouth.

Behind her, Isabela made a sound that Merrill couldn't decipher, and she broke off the kiss, already feeling a blush crawling up her neck into her face. "I'm sorry. I just... I just wanted to do that," she said apologetically. "I hope you don't mind. I would never have forgiven myself if I didn't at least try."

Marian stared at her, looking stupefied. Isabela stood up so fast she knocked the chair over, and let out a whoop of triumph. "WE HAVE A CIPHER!" she shouted. "More showing, less telling!"

Merrill squeaked as Isabela's arms encircled her from behind, lifting her into the air. Marian followed behind, grinning fit to burst as the three of them tumbled through the doorway into Merrill's narrow bedroom.

The door swung shut on the sound of giggling.

* * *

~to be continued...


	3. Chapter 3

"All right, one down, two to go," Hawke said once they had installed the mage Hawke back in the Hanged Man, where he seemed happy enough to stay. The black trail coming from the mirror and leading to him had gradually lessened in intensity the closer the copy got to the mirror, and the periodic waves of demons had also dropped off. It was a welcome breathing space, and a hopeful indication that Anders was right about how to fix this mess.

"We've just got to track down the other two now," Varric said. "Any ideas which we should focus on first? Because splitting the party seems like a pretty poor idea, if you ask me."

"We could keep on chasing Isabela," Anders said hopefully. The idea of meeting up with Isabela and the rogue Hawke was almost as appealing as the idea of _not_ meeting up with creepy stalker warrior Hawke.

"She and the copy have already led us on a wild-goose chase through half of Kirkwall," Hawke complained.

"Then surely they must be slowing down," Anders wheedled.

Hawke sighed. "Not if I know Isabela," he said. "All right. We last saw her trail near the Blooming Rose, so -"

"Hawke!" a familiar voice burst into their discussion. The three of them looked up the street to see Aveline bearing down on the Hanged Man, a dark scowl on her face.

"Oh, hi, Aveline," Hawke said, locking a smile of sheer panic onto his face. "What's up with you? Nothing's up with me! Certainly nothing to do with magic mirrors and infestations of eldritch horrors, haha!"

Aveline caught up to them and gave Hawke a stern scowl. "Hawke, what's gotten into you?" she demanded. "I have six complaints from various nobles from today alone that you were rude, aggressive and, I quote, 'told the Duchess Lafaille to pull up her big girl pants and learn to manage her own affairs for once in her spoiled life.' Not that I haven't experienced the urge to say that to her before but Hawke, what the fuck?"

Anders laughed, Varric hid a smile and Hawke choked, but Aveline wasn't finished yet. "And! What's this about you attacking a Templar patrol in Darktown?"

Anders stopped laughing mid-breath. "That wasn't me!" Hawke protested.

"Wasn't you?" Aveline said incredulously. "Donnic brought this report to me himself! Are you going to try to convince me that there's another warrior, going by the name of Garrett Hawke, running around Darktown picking fights with Templars, who looks just like you?"

" - but even sexier," Anders muttered out of the side of his mouth, and Varric kicked his ankle.

"Er..." Hawke fidgeted. "...yes?"

Aveline stared at him for a long, long moment, and Hawke wasn't sure whether she was going to burst out breathing flame like a dragon for lying or rip his head off for telling the truth. In the end, she just shook her head and stepped forward into his personal space, jabbing a finger into his chest. "Fix it," she said. "Whatever you did, take care of it. _Now._ I don't want to hear any more news about you tangling with Templars or gangs or nobles today. Not when I still have to get to the bottom of these mysterious demon attacks..." she muttered under her breath, turning away and stomping back towards the stairs to Hightown.

The three remaining companions looked at each other. "Should we tell her?" Anders offered.

"I'm not going to tell her! Varric, _you_ tell her!" Hawke exclaimed.

"Why me?"

"Because you can make it sound like it's not my fault!"

"Hmm, I could," Varric contemplated. "But why would I want to?"

* * *

"I don't see why you need me for this," Anders whined as they dragged their way back into Darktown. "You heard Aveline, there are Templars! You don't want me around Templars, do you? Bad for the property values."

"Still need someone to set shit on fire, Blondie," Varric said cheerfully, nudging Anders along with an elbow to the back that nearly knocked him down a set of stairs.

"Look, there's no need to get so worked up," Hawke tried to placate his new boyfriend. "We're just going to your clinic to pick up his trail, there's no reason to suppose he's even still -"

"Anders!" a familiar voice shouted from the other side of the bridge.

" - there," Hawke ended in a grumble, then sighed. "Well, at least we don't have to run around after him any more."

The tall figure in bulky plate armor strode towards them, the bridge trembling under his heavy tread, his attention fixated solely on Anders. "I've been looking all over Darktown for you," the warrior Hawke said without preamble. "To give you this." He thrust out his arm.

Metal clattered and squealed as he did, and it took the three of them a moment to parse what they were seeing: half a dozen Templar helmets, tied together by their tassels and clutched in Hawke's fist like a wilting bouquet of flowers. Hawke recoiled, and Anders' skin drained white as he carefully stepped forward and reached out a hand to accept them.

"WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK," Hawke screeched.

Anders carefully took the head-garland, and his hands jumped as the unexpected lack of weight hit him. He quickly flipped one of the helmets upside down, and breathed again. "There's nothing inside," he reported.

"Oh thank the Maker," Hawke breathed. "I repeat: WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK!"

"Of course there's not," the warrior Hawke said, sounding insulted. "Do you think I'm a barbarian?"

"Well, actually..." Varric started, rubbing his chin, but Hawke ignored him. That, at least, was a trait they all had in common, he thought with a sigh.

"I didn't hurt them," warrior Hawke exclaimed with injured dignity. "I just kicked their teeth in, took all their clothes and armor and made them run home to the Gallows in their smalls."

Anders stared at Hawke, the helmets still clutched in his hands. "...If you weren't a soulless abomination of magic I would be so seriously turned on right now," he said.

Warrior Hawke actually _smiled,_ and Hawke felt it was more than time to break this party up. "Right! That's it, back to the Hanged Man," he yelled, and hustled them off, taking care to keep himself between Anders and the copy all the way back up to Lowtown.

This had been a _horrible_ idea.

* * *

Isabela and Marian leisurely perused one of the clothing stalls in the Lowtown bazaar, looking for a replacement shirt for Isabela - her white tunic was back at Merrill's, the elf having promised to do her best to get the stains out, while she wore one of Merrill's in return. It was far too small for her, a situation that which Marian was not in a hurry to complain about.

A commotion at the stairs leading down to the docks perked both their attention, and the two rogues sidled around to the head of the stairs to witness a peculiar procession: half a dozen men and women dressed in nothing but their smallclothes, huddling together in a tight knot as they stumbled up from Darktown towards the docks. One figure strode slightly ahead of the rest, his head held high and his posture stiff and straight-backed despite his state of undress, the black eye, and the full-body blush.

"Isn't that Cullen?" Marian exclaimed, catching sight of the familiar kinked blond hair. "What in the Void happened here?"

Isabela made a thoughtful noise, then stepped away from the wall making a beeline for the Knight-Captain. Marian made a grab for her before she'd gotten two steps. "Really, Izzy," she said, somewhere between amused and exasperated. "A _Templar?_ _That_ Templar?"

"Look," Isabela told her, twisting out of her hold and capturing her wrist in turn, leading her down the stairs with a wink. "When the Maker starts raining naked hunky men from the heavens, you don't stop to ask questions, you just grab a bowl."

Marian supposed that was a fair point.

* * *

Before they could get down the stairs, though, they heard another familiar voice calling. The Templars looked up at the sound of the voice, caught sight of the party at the top of the stairs, and fled as one. Marian and Isabela glanced at each other, eyebrows raised, before they turned to see the source of the commotion.

Standing at the top of the stairs and frantically waving were Hawke, Anders, Varric, and... Hawke again. It took a moment for Isabela to sort out the two of them, but the one on the right was just too big, too bulky, too scowly, and too _intimidating_ to be real. Isabela and Marian strolled back up the stairs, arm in arm.

"We've been looking for you all over the city," Hawke said.

"Really?" Isabela smirked, and enjoyed the way the original Hawke's expression turned to confusion, then outrage as he took in her appearance.

"Is that -" he spluttered. " _Merrill_ too! Maker, Isabela!"

"Well, Merrill's date for the evening checked himself out, so we didn't want to leave her all alone," Marian said sweetly. "What about you three... four? Found some entertainment of your own?"

The warrior snorted and crossed his arms, looking off into the distance. Hawke's face fell, the outrage sliding off into a much less amusing expression of remorse. "Listen, Isabela... Marian," he said, addressing the rogue with some hesitation. "There's something we... I need to tell you. There are some unforseen complications..."

"Such as?" Marian asked him, but he never got the chance to answer.

"Isabela! Marian!" a familiar voice piped up over the noise of the crowd, and they looked over to see Merrill hurrying through the market to catch up with them. Isabela's tunic was clutched in one hand, the inky black stain having spread even further up the white fabric.

"What is it, Kitten?" Isabela asked as Merrill caught up with them, and she took a moment to catch her breath, bent over with her hands on her knees. "Is the Alienage on fire?"

"Only metaphorically!" Merrill said as she straightened up, her green eyes wide. "Isabela! Those stains on your shirt - the ones you couldn't get out -"

"Oh Maker," Hawke groaned, and Varric shushed him.

" _\- they aren't really stains at all!_ That is to say, they aren't real, _physical_ stains - they're manifestations of the corruption of reality itself, caused by the proximity of an occult event which is straining the bounds of space-time itself! It must be the copies. We need to send them back through the mirror they came from, or all of Kirkwall will be swallowed!"

There was a moment of ringing silence, and then Hawke pointed at Merrill. "What she said."

* * *

It was a grim crowd who'd gathered in the spare room at the Hanged Man before the mirror. They'd battled ooze demons uphill the whole way, and everyone in the crew - copies included - were exhausted. Fenris had shown up before the fighting had completely died down; apparently the trail of warped reality had led a wave of ooze demons right to his front doorstep, and once they were dispatched, he'd followed the trail back down to the Hanged Man specifically to punch Hawke in the face.

Bringing all three copies back into the same room as the mirror had quietened the malignant black trails for a time, but it wasn't as though they could stay in the same room for the rest of their lives - if nothing else, they'd probably kill each other by sundown. The mage Hawke had made the mistake of referring to Anders as an abomination in the warrior Hawke's hearing, and the result had been a knife fight that had nearly set the Hanged Man on fire, _again,_ and left Marian and Isabela cheering from the sidelines while Hawke and Varric struggled to get them apart.

"Well." Varric cleared his throat and clapped his hands. "Let's get this show on the road, shall we? Any requests for wine? Beer? Food? Music? I could get a band in here to play 'Taps'. "

"None of that is going to make this any easier," Merrill said softly, turning wide shining eyes on him. "You realize that we're basically asking them to give up their lives for this - before they've really begun."

Everybody tried to avoid looking at everybody else, and especially tried to avoid looking at any of the copies.

"But it has to be done," Anders said sadly. "We'll be completely overwhelmed by demons eventually. Everyone in Kirkwall is in deadly danger until this is over."

Mage Hawke stood up, his jaw set firmly. "If this is what will save Kirkwall, then I'll do it," he declared proudly. "There is no greater fate than to lay your life at the feet of the Maker; there is no better death than to take the blow for another."

"Wow, that was almost poetic," Hawke said. "Are you sure you're me?"

Hawke glowered at him, then paced towards the mirror, taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders.

"Mage..." Fenris called out at the last moment, and Hawke stopped. The elf fidgeted against the doorframe he'd been propping up, looking deeply unsettled. "I just want you to know that... I don't... hate you... entirely."

His face lit up with joy, and hearts and sparkles seemed to manifest in the air around him. "Then I REGRET NOTHING!" he shouted, and threw himself forward into the mirror.

There was a flash of light, and then he was gone. The first of the three black trails pooling at the base of the mirror evaporated.

After a long moment, Marian Hawke stood up with a sigh. "Well, I guess that's my cue, isn't it?" she asked. "After all, I can't let that goody-two-shoes show me up."

"But..." Isabela clung to her hand, looking heartbroken.

Marian smiled, kissing her hand before dropping it with another pat. "Don't get all soppy on me, Isabela. It's just another grand adventure, isn't it?"

"But... the boobs!" Isabela burst into tears. "The finest boobs I've found in Kirkwall! And now they're leaving this world forever..."

"Shhh Isabela, it's okay," Merrill soothed her, petting her hair. "You can touch my boobs any time if you want, if it'll help!"

Isabela groped Merrill with a disconsolate expression, and looked only slightly cheered up by it.

"Now," Marian said in a firm voice, her eyes narrowing as she approached the mirror. "Bring me that horizon..."

Another flash of light; another emptiness. More of the blackness dried up and faded from view.

Everyone's eyes went to the warrior Hawke, sitting alone in the corner. He stood up with a growl and a clatter of plate. "All right, I'll do it," he said. "But not for Kirkwall, and not for him. I'm doing this for you, Anders." He wheeled around to point towards the mage, who looked taken aback to be singled out.

"Look..." Anders said with a sigh. "I'm sorry, but I can't..."

"I feel what I feel," the warrior interrupted him. "Whether you return my feelings or not doesn't matter.

"I just want you to know that he's -" a jerk of his chin indicated the original Hawke - "not going to stand by you. He doesn't have the guts to do what has to be done. He'll never care for you like I do."

"Okay, putting aside the fact that you're a soulless magical simulacrum and any kind of actual relationship between us is impossible... thank you." Anders' lips curled in a strange, sad smile. "But - you were made from him. Whatever potential is in you, is also in him."

"He'll turn on you in the end," Hawke warned him, a strange pain in his red eyes.

Anders glanced at Hawke, tightening the grip of their hands together, then raised his chin. "I have faith in Hawke to do what's right," he said. _Whether that's standing by me or not._

"Try having faith in yourself," Hawke said, and turned his back on them to stride into the mirror.

The mirror flashed brightly as the last copy entered it, and for a moment the proud warrior's outline was silhouetted in blinding black on white. The last of the oily black corruption crept reluctantly back across the threshold of the mirror as though being soaked up by a sponge, and as it did the mirror glowed brighter, and brighter, until it burst on a shattering note.

When the glow died down, the mirror sat placidly in its twisted frame in the corner, the clouded glass cracked from side to side. The last of the subtle glow had vanished, as had the faint sweet magical hum.

Fenris was the first to speak. "Whatever happens, Merrill is absolutely never allowed near that thing."

"Hey!" Merrill's indignant protest was drowned out under a general chorus of agreement. She subsided with a grumble, crossing her arms and sticking out her lower lip in an adorable pout. Isabela laughed, and kissed it.

The usual banter was subdued, almost daunted; Anders had fallen silent, a pensive expression on his emotive face. Hawke edged close enough to pull his hand across his stomach and grip it tight. "So hey," he said quietly. "Are you sure you're okay with this? With... I mean... he seemed to really like you." He nodded towards the dimmed mirror.

"What? The copy?" Anders blinked back to awareness. "Oh Maker, no. I can't begin to tell you how creepy it was talking to him and feeling nothing inside. Like a desire demon had stolen your face. It's not his fault, I suppose..." He sighed. "But I'm glad he's gone."

"If you're sure," Hawke said tentatively. "I just... I just want to make you happy. Even if you aren't happy with me."

Anders smiled, his eyes misty, and pulled Hawke in for a kiss. When it ended, he stayed near, his forehead resting against Hawke's and their lips close enough to feel each other's breath. "Every mage knows," he said quietly. "When something seems too perfect to be true, it usually is. That's how the demons tempt you.

"But their illusions are empty. There's nothing there. Reality is better. The real thing is better." He smiled, and squeezed Hawke's arms appreciatively. "Even when it is sometimes _incredibly_ stupid."

It took Hawke a moment to work that one out. "Hey!"

"So!" Varric called out, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. "Who wants to drink until we go blind, and also forget this ever happened?"

Every hand present shot into the air except Anders'. "I do!" they yelled.

"First round's on me?" Hawke offered placatingly as he started for the doorway.

"Oh no you don't, Hawke!" Isabela grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back. You're paying all right, but no drinks for _you_. This was all your fault. You can join us when you've learned not to meddle."

" ...so... never?" Hawke said with a whine. "I'm the Champion. Meddling is what I do! I'm a four-time winner at the meddling olympics! I meddle _professionally!"_

"Honestly Hawke, you should just have _told_ us," Merrill said with an exasperated sigh. "We're happy for you and Anders!"

"We are?" Fenris repeated dubiously.

Merrill pinched him. "We _are._ "

"I'm not saying it's not at least a little disappointing to see the prime cut go off the market," Isabela said, her careless tone not quite disguising the wistfulness in her eyes. She shook her head to dispel it. "But we're big boys and girls! We can pull up our britches and deal with it."

"But Isabela, you don't wear pants." Merrill's brow wrinkled in worry. "Or... underwear... at all."

"This is so true!" Isabela laughed, and pulled Merrill against her side. "Maybe I'll have to borrow some so that I can pull it up."

Merrill giggled. The two of them headed for the door, Fenris following. To Anders' surprise, Isabela hooked an elbow around his arm to drag him along. "Me?" Anders said incredulously. "But I don't drink!"

"Exactly why we need you; _someone_ has to be the designated driver," Isabela said with a wink. "Besides, we want _details."_

Anders allowed himself to be dragged off, a faint smile tugging at his lips despite the apologetic look he cast backwards at Hawke. _Later,_ he mouthed before he was vanished from sight.

Hawke sighed in sadness at the suddenly lowered apostate quotient of the room. "At least Merrill and Isabela seem to have found each other," he murmured. "I'm glad for them. But Fenris is still alone..."

Varric rubbed his chin, considering whether it was even worth attempting to dispense sage advice. The lure of his own cleverness won out. "Hawke, this may come as a surprise to you," he said, "but please consider the possibility that Fenris doesn't _need_ a lover to be a complete person. That maybe, at this point in his life, he's not even ready for one. And that even if he were, that it's not something that anyone - even you - can just give to him, like a housewarming toaster or a cat."

"A housewarming what now?" Hawke blinked.

"Never mind." Varric sighed. "I get that it's coming from a place of care but seriously, Hawke - let it go. It's not your place to arrange his love life, and not every problem in the world can be fixed with love."

"That kind of _is_ a surprise coming from _you_ , Varric," Hawke returned. "Considering how many novels you've turned out with that exact premise. 'Hard in Hightown' has what, how many installments by now?"

Varric shook his head. "Fiction and real life aren't always the same, Hawke," he said. He let out a wry chuckle. "For one thing, fiction has to believable - real life doesn't. Do you realize I'm not going to be able to write about _any_ of this in my books? No one would believe it. It's just so ridiculous, it would throw the reader right out of the story."

* * *

~end.


	4. Coda

"I don't believe it!" Cassandra shouted.

"Called it," Varric sighed. "Why d'you think I left it out of the book?"

"If you're lying to me..." Cassandra growled.

"If I were lying, Seeker, I would have come up with a heroic tale of refugees from another dimension, swords and sorcery, epic romance, finishing up with a grand climactic battle in the Viscount's keep," Varric said. "But you wanted to know what _really_ happened to the Mirror of Transformation, so I told you."

"An irreplaceable artifact!" Cassandra said incredulously. "And you are trying to tell me that the hero, the Champion, abused its magic to make... to make _love toys_ for his companions?!"

"I prefer the term 'whoremunculus,' " Varric said helpfully.

Cassandra stared at him.

"Took me a week to come up with that one," he admitted.

"Unbelievable!" Cassandra muttered, pacing back and forth. "To think that Hawke... the Champion of Kirkwall?! Dabbling in dark magic? Consorting with _demons?_ And not one of his companions thought to object except for this... this _elf_ you describe? The mighty warrior with the arcane tattoos, who fought loyally by the Champion's side only to end up alone?"

"Oh yes, mighty mistrustful of magic, that elf," Varric said agreeably. "The one thing he hates more than magic is Tevinter and slavery... two things. The two things he hates more than magic are slavery and the Tevinter imperium... and Anders, of course. Among the things that he hates -"

"Enough!" Cassandra interrupted with a shout. She gnawed on her lower lip, brow furrowed as she paced, and then abruptly leaned in close as her voice hushed. "...Do you by any chance still have his number?"

* * *

~really the end.


End file.
